Moos' first act: Invest in bandwidth?

RICH HOWARD

02/24/2010

ELSON FLOYD'S beautifully orchestrated PR campaign around the hiring of Bill Moos came to a crashing thud on Wednesday. In an apparent case of hype overwhelming bandwidth, WSU's video streaming of the press conference to officially introduce Moos went bust.

The Cougfan.com message boards were alive with comments from frustrated fans who were unable to access the feed.

One poster said that Moos' first action as AD should be an investment in bandwidth. Another suggested that the faithful could guess at what was being said in the press conference and proceeded to offer up some entertaining dialogue involving beer bongs and Dennis Erickson. Others pointed out the irony that WSU is home to one of the nation's esteemed colleges of communications.

All appeared well in the minutes leading up to the press conference's start. Viewers clicked on to see the table set, plastic water bottles in place, and the Cougar-head banner as a backdtrop. Tacky orchestra music was playing. And then the feed began to buffer -- starting and stopping about every three seconds. Just as President Floyd and interim AD Anne McCoy stepped to the stage, POOF! All was lost -- at least for a notable number of viewers.

This was like a marathon runner tripping with 100 yards left in the race. This was that snow boarder who was hot-dogging it four years ago and wound up giving away the gold.

Well, maybe it wasn't that bad. But the Great Crimson Streaming Meltdown really took the wind out of the sails on a day when the entire Cougar Nation was cheering.

Here was a chance for Moos to share more of his gospel. It was a chance for every crimson partisan to rejoice in the power of his vision.

It's not the end of the world, of course, because there's no denying what brought everyone to their computers this afternoon in the first place: Bill Moos is back where he belongs!

Now if he could just work a quick miracle on bandwidth. And while he's at it, a little cage rattling at NBC to get the U.S. Olympic hockey team on live TV wouldn't be all bad either.